Sha Monk, puffing with rage, leapt up out of the water and, seeing Pilgrim, said, "Brother, this monster has no manners at all."

He comes up furious - 氣呼呼, puffing with it, the doubled ending carrying the breath itself - and what he leads with is not the draw but the bad manners.

Pilgrim asked, "You were down there a good while before coming up — what manner of fiend is it, really?"

端的, "really, in truth," sharpening a question. Pilgrim wants the species identified; the fight does not interest him.

"Did you find any trace of the master?"

曾 is céng, "ever, at all," not the zēng of the surname. All three in the chapter take that reading.

Sha Monk said, "Down there he has a pavilion, and across its gate eight great characters are written — 'River-God's Palace of the Black-Water River, Hengyang Vale.'"

Sha Monk hands the eight characters back exactly as he read them off the lintel. That verbatim repetition is how the theft gets proved later - he is an unwitting witness giving evidence. 橫書 is written across, the way a lintel inscription runs.

"I slipped to one side and heard him within, ordering his imps to scrub out an iron cage — meaning to steam the master and Eight Rules and invite his uncle to keep a birthday feast."

And here he adds a detail of his own. The order he actually overheard said nothing about scrubbing the cage out; 刷洗鐵籠 is Sha Monk's embellishment, the domestic touch a witness supplies without noticing.

"That set my temper ablaze, and I went and battered at the gate."

發起怒來 - the anger comes up and out. The narrator had described the same moment as 按不住心頭火起; Sha Monk's own version is plainer.

"The monster came out gripping a bamboo-jointed steel whip, and we fought half the day — some thirty bouts — with neither of us gaining the day."

不分勝負, neither taking the day - the fixed phrase for a drawn fight, answering 不見高低 at the head of the previous passage.

"So I tried a feint of losing, to lure him out and call on you to lend a hand."

佯輸法, the feint of losing, a standard stratagem in this book. 著 is zhuó, having somebody do a thing.

"But the monster is cunning to the core — he would not chase me, and only meant to go back and send his invitation."

乖得緊 - cunning to the core, with 得緊 pushing the adjective to its limit. Though the truth is less flattering to the demon than Sha Monk thinks: the feint failed because the fiend had correspondence to attend to.

"And so I came up."

才, "only then" - closing the report by answering the question it opened with, which was why he took so long.

Pilgrim said, "I wonder what sort of fiend it can be."

The passage keeps reaching for vague words. 怪物, monster, three times; 妖邪, evil spirit, twice. Nobody risks naming a species until the very last exchange.

Sha Monk said, "In looks he is like a great soft-shelled turtle;"

模 is mú in 模樣, appearance - not the mó of a pattern or a mould. A 鱉 is the soft-shelled turtle, and Sha Monk offers it first because that is what the thing looked like.

"or else he is an alligator-dragon."

Then he hazards the right answer. The poem had already told the reader 鼉龍, alligator-dragon, several passages ago; this is the first time anybody inside the story says it.

Pilgrim said, "And who, I wonder, might this uncle of his be?"

And Pilgrim asks an idle question about an uncle nobody has met. The rest of the chapter is what happens when he pulls that thread.